All language subtitles for Kevin.Costners.The.West.S01E03.Oregon.Trails.1080p.NOW.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.H.264-playWEB_track3_[eng]

What would cause you to leave
your family and your home

and travel to a place where almost
no one speaks your language?

No one looks like you.

Your customs are foreign,
and where if you get in trouble,

no one you know is around to help.

For many, what drove them west
was the promise of land.

For a few, it was their faith,

and that's what moved
Christian missionaries

Narcissa and Marcus Whitman
to travel across the continent.

Their journey along the Oregon Trail
will inspire thousands to follow,

and spark a fateful encounter
with a Native nation

that redefines
the Pacific Northwest.

People live on myths,

and the myths that really stick
in the American experience

are the myths of the West.

The mountains were taller,
the deserts were harsher.

The snows were deeper.

American West conjures wonder,
possibility, opportunity.

The figure of the mountain man.

Notorious outlaws.

The cowboy.

The discovery of gold
in California.

This train of wagons
trailing across the prairie.

Everybody has a reason
for wanting this land.

But most of that land
was already occupied.

We have been residents
for more than 10,000 years.

But this is a clash of two
different ways

of seeing life itself,

fighting for the future of
your homeland on the one side...

...and fighting for the destiny of
the new republic on the other side.

The history of the West
is a creation story.

It's a creation of what we think of
as modern America.

The West is a place
where anything is possible.

It is the essence
of the American dream.

The core of this is,
what are we to be as a nation?

The reckoning is coming.

The West is this canvas on
which American dreams

become larger than life.

The year is 1836,

the final year
of Andrew Jackson's presidency.

The US now has 24 states

and four territories stretching
across the Mississippi River.

But the Americans have their eyes
on the Pacific coast.

California is part of Mexico,
but Oregon Country is up for grabs.

Settlement had been continuous
from the Virginia coastline,

the Massachusetts coastline,
even across the Mississippi.

Then you run into
this arid region...

...from the edge of the Great Plains

till you get to the rainy side
of the mountains in Oregon.

And so in the 1830s,

the settlement has to make
this big jump if you're gonna-

if you're farmers looking for land.

This is the green place beyond
the great American desert

where if you can just get there,

there's a possibility
of a life ahead.

Oregon Country stretches
from the Continental Divide

to the Pacific coast,

and from the northern edge of
California all the way up to Alaska.

Britain and America both lay claim
to the region

simply for having explored it.

In 1792, fur trader Robert Gray
was the first American to navigate

into the Columbia River,
which he named after his ship.

Britain traces its claim to
the voyage of Captain James Cook,

who sailed to Vancouver in 1778,

but after the two nations clash
in the War of 1812,

neither side wants to fight again.

And so in 1818,

they agree to jointly occupy
the Pacific Northwest.

The British have a much bigger
settlement imprint

on the West Coast.

The Hudson Bay Company was one
of these Canadian fur companies

that has a fairly elaborate
infrastructure

in the Oregon Country.
The US doesn't have much at all.

There was this national incentive

to put Americans
on the ground there.

If the place fills up
with Americans,

then the United States is gonna have
a better claim than the British.

The first men to arrive
in Oregon Country are explorers,

trappers, and traders.

They send back stories of fertile
lands, rich in natural resources.

You could get land cheap
in the West,

and you could get land
in Oregon free.

You could just go out there
and claim it,

because Americans at that time
did not recognise

that the Native American peoples
living on any territory

had title to the land.

The expansive land that was known
to our people

was millions of acres from
the source of the Columbia River

in British Columbia to the ocean.

We're the only people
in that landscape

who have been residents
for more than 10,000 years.

For Americans,

the most direct route to the
Pacific Coast is an arduous journey

over land
across two mountain ranges.

Few have the courage
to make the trip.

But then the missionaries
begin to arrive.

There's a series of events toward
the end of the first third

of the 19th century. It's called
the Second Great Awakening.

It's the revival of
evangelical Christianity,

a belief in the literal veracity
of the gospels and the Bible,

but also a call to bring others
to the Christian faith.

It really inflames
a lot of individuals,

and you're excited to take
all of this fervour, all this fire,

all this passion, and disseminate
the word into foreign lands,

and at that particular time,

foreign land was anything
west of the Mississippi.

The whole idea is
to convert the Indians.

Now, if in fact they also facilitate
the settlement of Oregon

by other white people,
I mean that's good too.

Missionaries are hearing
a story that, to them,

is so delicious.

They hear that four Indians from the
Pacific Northwest

travelled to St. Louis to get more
information about Christianity.

If somebody says,
"Bring the gospel to us,"

how, as a good evangelical
Christian, how can you say no?

We weren't looking
for a different God.

We were looking for the source
of the white men's power

that allowed them to have these
technologies that we did not have,

their guns and their metal kettles
and their steel traps, you name it.

The Christians mistakenly
believe that the Native visitors

speak for all Indigenous people
of the Pacific Northwest.

The call to mission sounds out
across the eastern states.

For Narcissa Prentiss,
a young woman in upstate New York,

it strikes a chord.

She leads revivals,
she teaches Sunday school,

and so she becomes very dedicated
to the idea

that a missionary vocation
is really the right thing for her.

She writes a letter

requesting support
from the church mission board.

The American Board of
Commissioners for Foreign Missions

would gather money
to support Protestant missions

to spread the gospel abroad,

but also in the American West,
on the frontier.

In 1836, women had so few rights
in America.

They could not own property
if they were married.

They could not write
a legal contract,

and the most important thing
is they could not vote,

which meant that they couldn't
change their lot in life.

This is why it's so incredible
that Narcissa, as a single woman,

was planning to go by herself
over to Oregon.

The missionary board tells
Narcissa they will not send a woman

into Indian country
unless she is married.

Marcus Whitman is a 32-year-old
doctor in upstate New York.

He is an evangelical Christian.

But he's bored by being a
doctor. There's no excitement in it.

He applies to
the American Missionary Board,

and they're not too keen
on sending him out as a single man.

And so they encourage him
to get married,

and he finds a suitable candidate
in the figure of Narcissa Prentiss.

You need a husband, I need a wife.

And so they get together,
they get married,

and then they present themselves
to the Mission Board.

And the Mission Board
at this point can't say no.

It's a 3,000 mile journey
to Oregon Country.

The day after their wedding,

Marcus and Narcissa leave
the comfort and safety

of western New York,
and travel to Liberty, Missouri,

a town on the western edge
of American settlement.

They had to go by horse and wagon,

and then they had to go
by canal barges,

move sometimes on sleighs,

and then when the horse and wagon
didn't work, they'd have to walk.

They're subject to the heat
and the rain and the snow.

It's incomprehensible.

Narcissa kept
a journal of her travels.

I think I shall endure
the journey well,

perhaps better than
any of the rest of us.

It seems to me now that we are
on the very borders of civilization.

They go with another couple,

Reverend Henry Spalding
and his wife Eliza.

It's a seven-month journey.

In the early 1830s, there really
wasn't much of a trail to Oregon.

It was a trapper's trail.
You couldn't get a wagon over it.

And so it was really
a tough, tough journey.

Marcus Whitman recognises that
the only way

that Christian civilization
as he perceives it

is gonna be planted in Oregon is,
and this is crucial,

when you can get women to come out,

because if it's just
the fur traders,

if it's just the explorers,
they don't create a settled society.

So Marcus Whitman gets it
in his head,

he is going to find
a wagon road.

The wagon was considered crucial,

because a wagon was
the moving van of its era.

Just imagine how difficult it
would be to go to Oregon in a cart.

But if this delicate example
of American female virtue

could do it,
I guess the door's open.

So the people who become
missionaries, first of all,

they're utterly convinced
of the importance

of what it is they're doing.

So this can give them courage to do
things that most people don't do,

because with this mindset,

when you encounter
some dangerous situation,

say, what's the worst
that can happen to me?

I'll get killed.
I'll die and go to heaven.

Travelling along
traditional Native trails,

missionaries Narcissa
and Marcus Whitman slowly traverse

the Great Plains on their way
to Oregon Country.

Narcissa's view of what was
in store for her

was really very idyllic.

She didn't imagine travelling
by wagon.

There's no shocks, and you are
jostled from pillar to post.

It can be hot, it can be cold,
it can be raining,

it can be thundering,
it can be lightning.

You can be smashing through ruts,
over rocks, over stumps.

It goes on and on and on.

Since we have been here,
we have made our tent large enough

for us all to sleep under,
quite a little family.

One of the great ironies is that
Marcus and Narcissa Whitman

travel west,

along with Henry Spalding,

a man Narcissa had rejected
in a proposal of marriage,

and he's sleeping in the same tent
with the Whitmans

on their honeymoon, a time when
they conceived their only child.

Pregnancy on that trip was one
of the most dangerous things

that could happen to you.

There's no stopping for you
if you have morning sickness.

There's no stopping for you
if you have a miscarriage.

And so that's the kind of thing
that creates extra pressures

for women
on these long, long migrations.

The Whitmans and the
Spaldings cross the Rocky Mountains

by way of the South Pass,

a route favoured
by the Shoshone people.

In July of 1836,

Narcissa and Eliza become
the first American women

to make this journey over
the Continental Divide.

As they travel west,
they meet for a rendezvous

in what is now Wyoming.
It's South Pass in the Rockies.

Once a year, miles from
the edge of American settlement,

a temporary city springs up,

populated by French, British and
American fur trappers and traders,

and hundreds of Native Americans
from across the plains.

These rendezvous are where
all these independent fur trappers

show up. You know,
drinking, gambling, fighting,

the whole thing.

You can imagine with some
missionaries showing up

at a rendezvous,

their mouths must have dropped
in utter shock to see what went on.

At the rendezvous,

Narcissa befriends a legendary
mountain man named Joe Meek.

Mountain men like Joe Meek
could help tell the Whitmans

where to go, how to get there,
give them local knowledge.

And so the mountain men became
a very important link

between the tribes
and the settlers who came.

As they approach Oregon Country,

the missionaries find their path
is more treacherous than ever.

Before noon, we began to descend
one of the most terrible mountains

for steepness and length
I have yet seen.

It was like winding stairs
in its descent, and in some places,

almost perpendicular.

Once they reach
the Blue Mountains

in Oregon Country,

they are forced to abandon their
wagons and continue on horseback.

And finally, after almost 200 days
on the road,

they get their first glimpse
of what will be their new home.

They're exhausted,
they're running low on provisions,

and they come over the crest
of the last mountain range,

and they look down and they have
this great sense of relief.

We've made it.

It must have been
absolutely amazing

after such an arduous journey,

and realising that this is
where you're gonna have your baby,

and you're thinking to yourself,

"I've come to bring
the light of true religion,

and the sun will shine
on my efforts."

And you might not be right.

In the fall of 1836,

Marcus and Narcissa settle
in the foothills

of the Blue Mountains
near Walla Walla.

Henry Spalding squabbles almost
the entire trip with Marcus Whitman.

And when they arrive
in the Pacific Northwest,

they really can't stand each other,

and they decide to live
120 miles apart.

The Spaldings settle among
the Nez Perce in the Lapwai Valley.

Meanwhile, Narcissa and Marcus
make their home near the Cayuse,

four days away by horseback.

The Nez Perce warn
the white missionaries

that it's probably dangerous
to live among the Cayuse.

For one thing, it's very dangerous
for a doctor,

'cause the Cayuse have
this longstanding tradition

of killing medicine men who fail.

For the Cayuse,
like many Native peoples,

medicine man is a sacred practice.

When you can't deliver results,
the Cayuse demand justice...

...and the penalty for that is death.

Despite the warnings
they receive about the Cayuse,

the Whitmans embrace
their missionary work.

Marcus builds the mission
with several hired hands

from the Hudson's Bay Company.

They call it Waiilatpu,

in the Cayuse language,
the place of the rye grass.

Funded by the missionary board
in the East,

it will include a mission house,
a school, and a farm.

Narcissa gives birth to her
daughter Alice in March of 1837...

...just about five, six months
after they set up housekeeping

at their mission.

Narcissa is thrilled
when she welcomes her little girl

into the world, and so is Marcus.

Now we have a child born
in the Promised Land.

At the mission in the early days,

the Whitmans have good relations
with the Cayuse.

The local chief, or head man,
his name is Tiloukaikt,

is seen as a benevolent,
a sort of a kind uncle.

He comes to see little Alice,
and in general,

the reception for
the whole family is very hopeful.

Tiloukaikt gave her
an Indian name,

called her Cayuse Girl.

That's how it translated.

And he calls her that because
she is a sign to us

that we will have good times ahead,
good fortune ahead.

We have young children,
they have young children,

and it is a family now.

Unlike the fur trappers
who came before them,

the Whitmans want to change
the way the Cayuse live

and what they believe.

So for Indigenous people,

Christianity wasn't
necessarily a threat initially,

because it's like,
oh, the Great Spirit,

well, that kind of makes sense,
and we'll incorporate that

into our belief systems until
it doesn't work for us anymore.

When the Whitmans arrive,

they think their ways
have to be followed

before the Native Americans
can be saved.

So that involves settling down,
becoming farmers,

cutting their hair, stop dancing,
stop gambling.

They want us to give up the way
of life that has sustained us

for more than 10,000 years.

The expectation is that we should be
as much like them as possible

in all factors of our life.

We should be prim and proper.

We should not...

...travel to gather our foods.

We should stay in one place
and grow our foods.

We should not take up
with the trappers and traders

in the way that we have,

and everything they want us
to change is not in our nature.

Life at the mission settles
into a routine of work and worship,

until one day, tragedy strikes.

The worst possible thing happens

when Alice is not quite
three years old.

Marcus and Narcissa don't notice
that their daughter

has wandered away.

So Alice is on her own,

and she's playing at the water...

...before anybody realises that they
haven't seen her for a few minutes.

And the alarm is raised
that Alice is missing,

and everyone begins to look for her.

And that's when they find
that she has drowned

in the Walla Walla River.

The body is recovered
and it's brought back to the family.

Tiloukaikt has known her
since she was born.

She's special to him,

and he's very sad to present
this little girl to her mother.

The loss of her daughter
changes her.

Her moroseness characterises
her relationship

more and more with our people.

Narcissa becomes very annoyed
with the fact that the Cayuse

come and go from the compound,
come and go out of her home

when she was despondent
and would rather just be to herself

and deal with her grief.

To make matters worse,

the Whitmans are failing
to convert the Cayuse.

Marcus and Narcissa Whitman
only manage to baptise two people

in the entire time
that they are running this mission.

Two.

Meanwhile, the Spaldings
are having more success

with the Nez Perce.

The competition between Henry and
Marcus sours into a bitter rivalry.

They don't like each other,
they're jealous.

They write tattling letters back
to the board in Boston.

And these letters,
there are hundreds of these letters,

in fact, most of them
tattling on each other.

They're behaving in a most
un-Christian, un-adult kind of way.

And so the board finally decides,
we're gonna pull the plug.

But Marcus refuses to
accept the mission board's decision.

With winter fast approaching,

he leaves Narcissa
in October of 1842,

and begins the 3,000 mile journey
back east

to plead his case in person.

Setting out from
Oregon Country,

late in the fall of 1842,

missionary Marcus Whitman makes
his way east across the continent.

At the end of a harrowing
six-month journey,

he arrives in Boston
in threadbare clothes

and throws himself on the mercy
of the Mission Board.

They give him one last chance.

Whitman returns from Boston
by way of St. Louis,

and in St. Louis, there is
a large wagon train formed.

He didn't organise it, but he ends
up becoming its defacto head man.

He shows them that wagons can,
in fact, cross the Rockies

and several hundred
American settlers come.

It opens the way for
almost exponential growth.

Seven years have passed
since Marcus first set off

for Oregon Country.

This time he is one of
the many making the trek.

In 1843,

more than a thousand Americans
are bound for Oregon Country.

Economic conditions in the East
are driving more and more

Americans into the West.

There's a financial panic in 1837

that throws a lot of people
out of work, and people in the East,

for whom life wasn't going so well,

they always thought they could
start over again in the West.

Much has changed since
the Whitman's first trip.

Back then, Marcus had been forced
to abandon his wagon

when the trail became
too rocky and narrow.

But the trail has been widened
and extended by Narcissa's friend

from the rendezvous,
mountain man Joe Meek.

Now wagon trains can make their way
over the Blue Mountains

past the Whitman mission,

and further west toward
the Pacific Coast.

Joe Meek's path becomes the last leg
of the legendary Oregon Trail.

Most of these Americans who head
west are utterly clueless

about how big this continent is,

and utterly shocked
when they get out there.

There are people who are trying
to carry their furniture,

and eventually,

the Oregon Trail becomes littered
with dining room sets,

and pianos, and rocking chairs,

and all sorts of things
that these eastern settlers

think they're gonna take with them
on this westward journey.

They encounter great difficulties,

but they're gonna get there
no matter what.

When families go west,

then you know that
the western settlement is serious.

In late September 1843,

Marcus returns to Oregon Country.

After more than a year apart,

Narcissa and her husband
are reunited.

The Great Migration gives them
a new purpose.

Turning their attention away
from the Cayuse,

they focus on supporting
new migrants

who stop off at the mission
on their way to the fertile lands

of the Willamette Valley
to the west.

Often when settlers travelled
west, they lost family members,

parents died,
and children were left orphans,

and the Whitmans took them in.

Narcissa Whitman recognises
she's not gonna be converting

Native people, and so she says,

"I realise that I have to focus
my efforts on trying to bring

the light of the true religion
to the white people around me.

The influx of migrants
strengthens the America's hold

on the Pacific coast.

Although it is still jointly
occupied with Great Britain,

Oregon figures more and more into
America's dreams for the future,

and becomes a key part of
James Polk's campaign

for president in 1844.

So James Polk runs for president
on an overtly expansionist ticket,

and he says,
"We're gonna claim all of Oregon."

After Polk is elected,

Great Britain gives into pressure by
the US and signs a treaty in 1846,

dividing Oregon Country between them
at the 49th parallel.

Great Britain understood that
the sheer juggernaut

of American intention,
and willpower, and manpower,

and economic power

was going to make it impossible
for them really to maintain

any claims to Oregon without a war,

and they didn't want to fight
that war.

The treaty gives
the British everything north

of the 49th parallel,

plus the island of Vancouver,

while the US gets the southern part
of Oregon Country,

gaining 18.5 million acres
of new land

and their first piece
of the Pacific coast.

But the American part of Oregon
remains unorganised

with no federal presence
and no formal government.

In the case of Oregon, the
settlers went ahead of government,

and then government came along
afterwards.

And so more people come
the next year,

and more people come
the year after that.

And so the Oregon Trail then
becomes the highway to Oregon.

The numbers go from like
250 one year,

to 1,000 one year,
to 4,000 the next year, to 7,000.

They're starting to outnumber
the Indigenous people of the region

very quickly,

and the Cayuse see
the transformation,

and they don't like it.

Among the many newcomers
at the Whitman mission in 1847

is a man named Joe Lewis.

He is of mixed blood,
part French Canadian, part Native.

He brings a stark warning
for the Cayuse.

Around the country,
Native people have lost their lands.

They have been wiped out.
They have been killed off.

Over the previous decade
and a half,

around a hundred thousand
American Indians

east of the Mississippi have been
forcibly displaced

under President Andrew Jackson's
Indian Removal Act.

American settlers have taken
their lands for themselves.

This news from Joe Lewis
alarms the Cayuse.

With Oregon now controlled by
the United States,

they fear that settlers
will soon take their land.

Then in the fall of 1847,

an outbreak of measles tears
through the Pacific Northwest.

White settlers contract the virus,

but many of them have
natural resistance.

The Cayuse and other
Native Americans do not.

Our ways of healing
are not working.

Dr Whitman's are not working
when they're burying two,

four, and six people a day.

Whitman didn't understand
how measles worked.

His favourite prescription was
to bleed people who were sick,

which made them sicker.

He didn't really know
what else to do.

Eventually disease will
kill nearly half the Cayuse,

hitting their children
hardest of all.

Marcus Whitman is not able
to save our people.

He's warned many times.

Among the Cayuse,
if you practice bad medicine,

you could pay with your life.

In November of 1847,

Marcus Whitman fires Joe Lewis
from the mission

where he'd been employed
as a labourer.

Lewis starts to spread
a pernicious rumour

that the Whitmans are poisoning the
Cayuse so they can steal their land.

If you're one of the Indians,
you're thinking,

"Boy, not only are they affronting
our beliefs,

but they're killing us."

Friendly Cayuse warn Marcus
that his life is now in danger.

But for reasons having to do
with the stubborn nature

of Marcus Whitman
and his sense of destiny,

Whitman will not leave.

On November 29th, 1847,
it all comes to a head.

That morning there was a funeral
for three Cayuse children,

all victims of measles.

Among the dead children is the son
of the local leader Tiloukaikt.

It is his third child to die
from the measles.

After the funeral,

Marcus and Narcissa receive
some visitors at the mission.

More than a dozen Cayuse men
gather outside their door.

He admits two or three
Cayuse warriors,

including Tiloukaikt and
another warrior named Tomahas

to this mission house.

I'm sure he sensed something
was amiss...

...and so he helps to get Narcissa
out of there with the child.

They engage him in conversation.

And they are there asking
Dr Whitman about medicine.

And what they wanted to show was
that he had poisons

in his medicines.

And according to witnesses,

Tomahas hits Whitman in the back of
the head with a tomahawk...

...knocking him to the ground
and cracking his skull.

He's then shot in the neck.

Narcissa goes to the window to look
out and see what's happening...

...and she's shot in the shoulder.

The Cayuse are not going
to abandon their mission

to get rid of the Whitmans.

They're able to get Mrs Whitman
on a settee

and carry it out.

Joe Lewis is one of the carriers
of that piece of furniture.

She's thrown off the settee that
she was carried out on into the mud.

She's shot, she's hacked,
she's whipped,

and she dies in the mud.

When our young men decided that
the Whitmans' lives should end...

...they didn't realise it would bring
down on us thunder from the east

that we could not have imagined.

After killing the Whitmans,
the Cayuse continue their slaughter,

killing 11 more white settlers
who are living at the mission.

When word of the massacre
reaches the Willamette Valley,

it causes rage
and a desire for vengeance.

The white people create
a militia to go to war.

The settlers want protection

from the federal government,

and they send Joe Meek
to Washington to ask for it.

Meek makes the case
that in order to defend the lives

of American citizens,

the Oregon Country needs
to become a US territory.

In August of 1848,

Oregon officially becomes
a territory of the United States.

600 federal riflemen are sent west
to hunt for the killers.

They send out a governor,
they send out the military.

It's open season on Indians
in the Oregon Territory.

The ensuing conflict will
come to be known as the Cayuse War.

The Native side suffers
devastating losses.

Finally, after two years,
in April of 1850,

five men turn themselves in
to stop the bloodshed.

Joe Lewis is not among
these volunteers, but Tiloukaikt is.

They make statements, depositions,
and Tiloukaikt says,

"Did not Christ die to save
his people?

So I die.
We die to save our people."

The so-called Cayuse Five
are transported to Oregon City

and hastily tried for murder
in a tavern.

A jury of white settlers hands
down a guilty verdict

and a death sentence.

Maybe half of all the white people
in the Willamette Valley

come to watch it.

The five men who were hanged
in Oregon City...

...we're still looking for
their graves,

because we'd like
to bring them home.

In 1855,

just 50 years after first welcoming
American explorers to the region,

the Cayuse are forced
to sign a treaty.

The terms are harsh.

They must give up their vast
homeland of over 6.4 million acres

and move onto
a 245,000-acre reservation

shared with other tribes.

The lands they surrender
are given to American settlers.

In 1859, Oregon becomes
the 33rd state in the union.

Henry Spalding, after the death
of his rival, Marcus Whitman,

becomes a one-man propaganda
machine,

and he essentially invents the
Whitman legend for American history.

Whitman is credited with getting
the Oregon Country

for the United States.

Spalding sends articles
to religious newspapers,

and eventually persuades
the US Senate

to publish his account
of Whitman's heroism,

elevating himself in the process.

And Marcus Whitman goes from being
a failed anonymous guy

who got killed

to a Christ-like figure
who sacrificed his blood

so Oregon could live.

The killing of
the Whitmans fails to stop the flood

of immigrants
to the rich farmlands of Oregon.

From the 1840s through the 1860s,

over 400,000 people travel west
along the Oregon Trail.

It was the greatest folk migration
in American history.

At some points, there were as many
as 12 wagons abreast

going across this country.

So many people come
to the Willamette Valley

that they actually carve a cut
through the mountains

and across the prairies that can be
seen still from satellites.

The epic migration
continues by foot, by cart,

by mule, and by wagon

until the Transcontinental Railroad
offers travellers a gentler way

to go west.

Oregon is changed forever.

Where the Cayuse once gathered food
and hunted game

and where the mountain men
once trapped animals for trade,

the varied landscape is now
supplanted by settlements and farms.

And so there is
a kind of transition from

an extraction economy of furs,

and now moving into an agrarian
economy in the Pacific Northwest.

We accept that our homeland is

the homeland of many people now.

Our elders always tell us
there's good and bad in everything

that happens.
You have to look at both.

Of the thousand Americans
that follow the Whitmans to Oregon,

few will see their deaths
as anything other than a massacre.

But their story is emblematic
of a pattern

that repeats across
the American West,

settlers using Native resistance as
an excuse to seize their homelands,

and just as they did in Oregon,

land-hungry settlers will push
into Texas

and turn a raid
on one pioneer family

into a long and bloody war,

fought against the most powerful
Native force on the continent,

the Comanche Empire.
Subtitles by Sky Access Services